18 TIIK EVOLUTION THEORY 



sontences: 'Tlu' \\ov\i\ lias lieon evolved, not created; it has arisen 

 little l>y little IVoiii a small bef^inniii^, and lias increased through the 

 ju'tivitv of tlif ilciiieiital forces embodied in itself, and so has rather 

 j^rown tlian suddenly eome into being at an almighty word.' 'What 

 a sublimi" idea of the iiitiiiiti' nnght of tlie great Architect! the Cause 

 of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens entium ! For if we 

 could comjiare the Infinite it would surely re(j[uire a greater Infinite 

 to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects them- 

 selves." 



J 11 these words he sets forth his position in regard to religion, 

 and does so in precisely the same terms as we may use to-day when 

 we say : ' All that happens in the world depends on the forces that 

 prevail in it, and results according to law; but where these forces 

 and their substratum, Matter, come from, we know not, and here we 

 have room for faith.' 

 ^ I have not been able to discover whether the Zoonomia, with its 



revolutionar}^ ideas, attracted much attention at the time when it 

 appeared, but it would seem not. In any case, it was afterwards so 

 absolutely forgotten, that in an otherwise very complete History of 

 Zoolociy, published in 1872 by Victor Carus, it was not even 

 mentioned. About a year after the appearance of Zoonomia, Isidore 

 Geoffroy St.-Hilaire in Paris expounded the view that what are called 

 species are really only 'degenerations,' deteriorations from one and 

 the same type, which shows that he too had begun to have doubts as 

 to the fixity of species. Yet it was not till the third decade of the 

 nineteenth century that he clearly and definitely took up the position 

 of the doctrine of transformation, and to this we shall have to return 

 later on. 



But as early as the first decade of the century this position was 

 taken up by two noteworthy naturalists, a German and a Frenchman, 

 Treviranus and Lamarck. 



Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, born at Bremen in 1776, an 

 excellent observer and an ingenious investigator, published, in 1802, 

 a book entitled Biologie, oder Ph'dosoxjhie der lehenden Ncdur 

 [Biology, or PJdlosophy of Animate Nature], in which he expresses and 

 elaborates the idea of the Evolution theory with perfect clearness. 

 We read there, for instance: 'In every living being there exists 

 a capacity for endless diversity of form ; each possesses the power of 

 adapting its organization to the variations of the external world, and 

 it is this poM'er, called into activity by cosmic changes, which has 

 enabled the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to climb to 

 higher and higher stages of organization, and has brought endless 



